George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin, Ireland, on July 26, 1856. His father was an alcoholic and unsuccessful businessman, and his mother a genteel woman interested in music and art. The family was poor and, when Shaw was six, moved in WIth another family to save expenses; his early experience of poverty is speculated to have affected the decidedly unromantic View of the poor shown in many of his plays, including Major Barbara. Shaw's formal education was brief, and he began work in a land agent's office before he was sixteen.

In 1876 Shaw moved to London, Joining his mother and sisters, who had arrived from Dublin the previous year. Working as a writer focusing on music criticism, short fiction, and drama, Shaw initially was unable to earn his own living and relied on his mother's earnings as well as an inheritance in order to make ends meet. His attempts...